Here Mrs Willis left the room, and the teachers desired the several girls in their classes to attend to their morning studies.
Nothing could exceed the dismay which her words had produced. The innocent girls were fairly stunned, and from that hour for many a day all sunshine and happiness seemed really to have left Lavender House.
The two, however, who felt the change most acutely, and on whose altered faces their companions began to fix suspicious eyes, were Annie Forest and Hester Thornton. Hester was burdened with an intolerable sense of the shameful falsehood she had told; Annie, guilty in another matter, succumbed at last utterly to a sense of misery and injustice. Her orphaned and lonely position for the first time began to tell on her; she ate little and slept little, her face grew very pale and thin, and her health really suffered.
All the routine of happy life at Lavender House was changed. In the large play-room the drawing-rooms were unused; there were no pleasant little knots of girls whispering happily and confidentially together, for whenever two or three girls sat down to have a chat they found that one or another of the teachers was within hearing. The acting for the coming play progressed so languidly that no one expected it would really take place, and the one relief and relaxation to the unhappy girls lay in the fact that the holidays were not far off, and that in the meantime they might work hard for the prizes.
The days passed in a truly melancholy fashion, and, perhaps, for the first time the girls fully appreciated the old privileges of freedom and trust which were now forfeited. There was a feeble little attempt at a joke and a laugh in the school at Dora’s expense. The most frivolous of the girls whispered of her as she passed as “the muddy stream;” but no one took up the fun with avidity—the shadow of somebody’s sin had fallen too heavily upon all the bright young lives.
Chapter Thirty Four.
Betty Falls Ill At An Awkward Time.
The eight girls who had gone out on their midnight picnic were much startled one day by an unpleasant discovery. Betty had never come for her basket. Susan Drummond, who had a good deal of curiosity, and always poked her nose into unexpected corners, had been walking with a Miss Allison in that part of the grounds where the laurel-bush stood. She had caught a peep of the white handle of the basket, and had instantly turned her companion’s attention to something else. Miss Allison had not observed Susan’s start of dismay; but Susan had taken the first opportunity of getting rid of her, and had run off in search of one of the girls who had shared in the picnic. She came across Annie Forest, who was walking, as usual, by herself, with her head slightly bent, and her curling hair in sad confusion. Susan whispered the direful intelligence that old Betty had forsaken them, and that the basket, with its ginger-beer bottles and its stained table-cloth, might be discovered at any moment.